September 25, 2012

Admittedly, a few days have passed since the September 8-9th 2012 MozCamp EU in Warsaw. But, I wanted to say a few words about the incredible experience.

I was so excited to attend this MozCamp in particular. Eastern Europe, and Poland especially, have some of the oldest and strongest Mozilla communities, in existence for well over a decade. And, Poland is continually at the top of our browser marketshare charts, with roughly half the population using Firefox. Having never been to Poland, I’ve always seen these numbers and wondered about the people and stories behind them.

I’d met many Mozilla Poland community members over the years and knew they were passionate for the open web – people like Marcin Jagodziński, who first translated Firefox into Polish, and Marek Wawoczny, who maintains Mozilla Poland’s active community site. But, meeting these contributors together as a vibrant and enthusiastic community sheds light on Eastern Europe’s passion for open source. The communities here are healthy and growing. They are directly involved in education, many regularly speaking at university campuses to get students excited about innovating in the open. It was incredible to hear about the specific challenges that each community faces in their regions and the creative ways they step up to meet them, from hacking at meet.js events in Krakow to the Free Hugs from Firefox in Paris.

And, as at all Mozilla events, the talks and demos were incredible. As a gamer, I thought one of the most exciting projects was BananaBread, a fully 3D FPS built using only HTML5 by Anant Narayanan, Alon Zakai, and others.

Wesley Johnston showed off some pretty exciting stuff coming up in Firefox Android, like smooth-as-butter scrolling and reader mode, which turns your ugly mobile site into something that will make typographers cream their pants.

Paul Rouget updated us on the latest developer tools hotness, including including tilt, which lets you visualize a site’s DOM tree in 3D, and the new command line.

I gave a talk on how to user test mobile apps (and other projects). It was a great experience, and people brought some excellent ideas and questions! I’ll blog more about this talk later.

Of course, I could never do justice to all the great talks, collaboration, and hacking that went on over two very short days, but thanks to everyone who made this MozCamp so awesome. Meeting the Mozilla community always leaves me feeling humbled to work on the Project, inspired by what’s coming up, and (in this case) hungover on buffalo vodka.

June 15, 2011

Whenever you open a new tab in Firefox, your goal is to navigate somewhere. To aid your navigation, on this new tab Firefox currently offers you… nothing. Just a blank page. 100% white, and 100% not useful.

Firefox has been displaying this blank page when users open a new tab for as long as there’s been a new tab. And, partially, it’s deliberate. After all, a blank page is guaranteed not to distract you from your current task. It’s just clean and white, like a canvas, offering no suggestions for the next move and no distractions from it. Alex Faaborg explains very well in his recent blog post the concerns we have with distracting users and the ways that data overload on a new tab page can be harmful.

This isn’t the case when you open a new tab in other browsers. Opera was the first to offer a “Speed Dial” with giant thumbnails linking users to their most frequented sites. Safari’s giant wall-o-televisions offers much the same. Chrome has played around with different designs, first trying a speed dial like Opera’s and later integrating other content, such as apps. Internet Explorer, the most unusual of the designs, offers you some options: reopen closed tabs and sessions, start private browsing, or use an “Accelerator,” which usually means do “something with Bing.”

So, which approach is best for our users? Would presenting large thumbnail targets to direct people to sites they frequently visit save them time? Could we present information to make it easier for users to navigate to their next destination? Can we do so without being distracting and leading users away from the task they had in mind?

We realized that we couldn’t answer these questions without finding out more about our users. So, a few people at Mozilla are heading up studies to find out how people use tabs and how different designs of new tab page effect how they browse and user the web.

Here’s what’s going down:

1. Quantitative study through Test Pilot on what users do after opening a new tab

Intern Lilian Weng is currently working on a quantitative study within Test Pilot to capture data on what users do after they open a new tab. This should answer questions surrounding user intention when opening a new tab, and possibly how long users take to perform actions after opening a new tab.

2. A/B test of a new tab page vs. blank new tab

Interns Diyang Tang and Lilian Weng are preparing to do an A/B test using Test Pilot to determine how user behavior differs when presented with a new tab page vs. none. They are attempting to answer questions such as:

– Does a new tab page slow users down (e.g., by distracting them), or speed them up (e.g., help them find the target site faster)?
– Does a new tab page discourage breadth in visited sites?
– How do users navigate to a website after they open a new tab in each scenario? (location bar, search bar, top sites, bookmarks, history, etc.)
– Are there users who are more mouse-based and some who are more keyboard-based? How does a new tab page affect them?

3. Cafe testing for current Firefox

Diane Loviglio and myself are preparing more qualitative “cafe” tests to gain insight into how people use tabs currently. We’d like to know why and when users open new tabs in a more contextual perspective than Test Pilot data provides. Our goal is to find a wide enough range of users that the most common new tab behaviors can be grouped and discussed in a more tractable framework.

4. Testing multiple new tab page designs

Once the research from tests 1-3 is available, variations on new tab pages will be implemented and tried out with real users. There are multiple testing methods that could be useful here, such as a multivariate testing or even journaling to gain insight into how new tab pages effect behavior of a user over time.

5. Creating a contextual speel dial implementation

Not quite a research project, but intern Abhinav Sharma is designing and implementing an experimental new tab page which uses contextual information about a user’s current browsing session to offer suggestions. His page makes intelligent recommendations about where you’re likely to go next based on where you’ve been. The project’s still in alpha, but you can see the code he’s done already for a basic speed dial implementation on his github.

You’ll notice that a lot of this work is being done by our awesome new Summer 2011 interns! It’s only early June and they’re already rocking hard.

I’ll post what we learn from these studies as results come in. I predict we’ll gain some insight into user behavior that will inform not only Firefox’s new tab design, but many other features besides!

June 2, 2010

As we choose priorities for the next version of Firefox’s features and development, the Firefox team has been considering the state of the web and looking for areas where online content has changed faster than browser functionality. One area of concern is the growing use of private user data, especially by advertisers. User data being silently and persistently passed between sites and advertisers is disturbing for those with an interest in user choice and transparency on the web.

Privacy vs. Security

Privacy and security are related but distinct topics. Security refers to the prevention of material harm to the user. Avoiding theft, fraud, and data loss are all security issues. Browsers have been working to improve security for decades, prompted by increasingly sophisticated viruses, malware, and other exploits.Privacy is a broader topic than security. It refers to users’ control over what they reveal about themselves online, whether or not what they reveal might lead to material harm. All internet users reveal some information about themselves to some sites, but the user has privacy if his discretion determines what information is shared with whom.

Firefox has Local Privacy but Needs Network Privacy

The Firefox team has already done some great work on local privacy with improvements such as Private Browsing mode, Clear Recent History, and Forget about this Site. These features give users better control over when their data is exposed and hidden on their own computer. However, wider privacy issues surface when data is shared over a network.

One major problem of the modern web is the ability for private user data to be collected by advertising companies via third-party cookies.

Any website you visit can contain ads and other components that send cookies from your browsing session on the domain you trust to an advertising domain. These third-party cookies can be used to track information about users across multiple sites and multiple browsing sessions, allowing web habits to be profiled and tracked. This data can tell companies limitless kinds of information, such as what purchases you make, what news you read, your income, if you’ve applied for work, and what dating sites you prefer. One manifestation of this data sharing is seeing to ads targeting users based on data and actions from other sites.

The ability for advertisers to gain and use this data violates user privacy for several reasons:

It’s nearly impossible to detect. Much of the data-sharing happens in the background during a browsing session without asking or notifying the user. Users usually only discover what has happened when they are seeing targeted ads (long after the data has been transferred).

It occurs without user consent. Of the sites that are even aware of third-party cookie sharing, few give users control over how their data is shared with advertisers. Sites that do offer preferences sometimes phrase them in ways that disguise their purpose, such as “do you want relevant content to be shown based on your usage” rather than “do you want ads to be shown based on your personal data.”

It contradicts the user’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Some sites that knowingly share data present a false image of being responsible with user data. They may show the user preferences that imply control, assure users that their data is “safe,” or offer to let users read a lengthy privacy policy in order to hide their actual practices. Of course there’s a very special hell set aside for sites that change privacy settings to be more permissive once users have already signed up and entrusted their data.

It’s nearly impossible to prevent. Even a user who is privacy conscious and reads all privacy policies, keeps his privacy settings up to date, and avoids sites that don’t guarantee privacy isn’t necessarily safe. Any site he’s given data to could potentially use it without asking, and third-party cookies could be sent via ads and web bugs without the knowledge of the site’s owners. Heck, any site could be scraping identifiable information from his digital fingerprint.

It potentially embarrasses the user. Data sharing via third-party cookies takes information given by the user at some point in time and exposes it at another time. While the user may be discrete about where he is viewing certain content and even use Private Browsing Mode for items to not appear in history, advertisers using third-party cookies can expose user actions at times out of the user’s control.

So what can Firefox do to improve its story on privacy?

1. Provide intelligent defaults for third-party cookie behavior

Simply disabling third-party cookies isn’t the solution. Third-party cookies are necessary for legitimate web functionality such as embedded content, session management, mashups, etc. Most bank websites depend on third-party cookies for functions such as bill paying. The goal should not be to outright disable third-party cookies, but to be more intelligent about what behavior is allowed.

The http-state working group is currently working to produce a specification in multiple documents to lay out how clients should behave with regard to cookies (see current drafts here). Dan Witte, the cookie module owner at Mozilla, has been in communication with them and is doing his own work to develop a modern cookie standard. The goal is to create a guideline that Mozilla can follow that aligns with our Manifesto to protect user choice on the web. Dan’s already working on one way Firefox could address the problem by enabling third-party cookies, but only temporarily. His idea is to keep third-party cookies active only for the life of one tab. When the tab is closed, the cookies are deleted – advertisers could not track users from site to site. Dan will be blogging about this later with more details on his work.

2. Give users better control over how sites can access their information in Preferences

Currently, Firefox gives users precise, fine-grained control over the many ways that sites can access user data. All the user needs to do is change their on each Preference panel that effects site privileges:

As can be seen above, the current Firefox interface gives each site privilege type – saving passwords, cookies, etc – its own separate preference window. This design is framed around the implementation model rather thanthe user’s mental model, meaning it’s designed in a way that corresponds with how it was built rather than how users perceive the action they want to take. Having an individual window for each permission makes sense from an implementation standpoint, because each site privilege is separate in code. From the user’s perspective, however, it’s impossible to tell what privileges a particular site has. A better design would present controls in a site-centric rather than technology-centric view. If a user decides that he doesn’t trust site X and doesn’t want it to have any access, it would be more efficient to control all of site X’s access in one – not 15 – Preference windows. Alex Faaborg made this mockup to illustrate how a site-centric UI could be achieved:

While all of Firefox’s Preferences need to be improved, including site-centric privacy controls like Alex’s above for Firefox 4.0 would go a long way towards putting users back in control of their data.

3. Give users better control of their data while they are browsing

While a site-specific Preference panel will help users have better fine-grained control of their privacy when they’re configuring Firefox, there’s some options and information that can be exposed while the user is browsing. If a site has access to geolocation, for instance, this should be constantly indicated in Firefox’s interface. If a site is storing a password, this should be easy to change or remove without opening Preferences. Firefox’s Site Identity Button, which currently gives very little information about a site, could be improved to give information about a site’s privileges and the ability to change them.

It’s our goal for Firefox 4.0 to give users more control of their data, both by literally giving them controls and, more importantly, creating intelligent defaults that protect a user’s privacy and anonymity without breaking web functionality. It’s my hope that even simply exposing what access sites have to data will be positive for the web by eroding the sense of false security that many sites try to create for their users and creating awareness of and control over how, where, and when data is being shared.

May 21, 2008

I’m Jennifer Boriss, but I go by just Boriss. Two weeks ago I started work at Mozilla as a user experience designer. I’ll be working alongside established superheros Mike Beltzner, Alex Faaborg, Madhava Enros, and Aza Raskin to make the Firefox the best online experience possible.

I’m joining Mozilla at an interesting and exciting time. The much anticipated Firefox 3 will arrive soon, and its first release candidate was released on May 17. The response to RC1 so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and deservedly so. Firefox 3 is a solid, excellent product, and everyone here and in the community is very thrilled to see it out the door. The Firefox 3 release is the latest in a long series of exciting events to happen at Mozilla. Ever since Firefox 1.0’s release in 2004, it’s been steadily gaining users in almost every country. Today, Firefox enjoys over 16%[1] market share online (28%[2] in Europe), and this is only growing. Fairly impressive, considering IE held 95%[3] of the market at Firefox 1.0’s release.

Like many, I found the success little open-source browser that could very exciting. Beyond the fast, clean web experience, the collaborative and open nature of Firefox’s development is exciting as a model for achieving projects online across many countries. And also like many, I found the previous lack of choice in browsing and the poor user experience of Internet Explorer disturbing. If the internet is the new medium of information, business, and communication, the experience of its users is too important to be entirely written by Microsoft. This is why I joined Mozilla and am pumped about what’s to come.

This is a formative time for Mozilla, but also the internet as a whole. The nature of the browser and online experience will go through a series of important changes – evidenced in part by the hype of web 2.0 and more recent development of rich internet applications. How we access and create content is still shifting and being rewritten. While no one knows the precise direction the internet will take, we can set broad goals and work through advancing technology to achieve them. My focus is on user experience, so some possible goals could be:

Accessibility and freedom of information

Protection of the user’s privacy and data

Ease of content access and creation

Ability to customize one’s personal online experience

A positive online experience for any task from work to leisure

These are fairly broad goals, and I surely don’t know all the specifics of how we should achieve them. And, given the number of very passionate Firefox users, the task of improving the user experience is a bit daunting. If Firefox were a poor product, this job would be easy. As it is, Firefox already has what I consider an excellent user experience, and I know the risk of fixing something that isn’t broken – I won’t do it lightly. That’s why I’m hoping this blog will be more of a conversation than a monologue. I’ll use it to post ideas and designs for Firefox, and hope that people will comment. I welcome all feedback, especially negative. After all, my job at Mozilla isn’t to implement my own personal visions, but rather to be an advocate for the users. So rant, rave, complain, tell me what makes your grandmother angry, whatever – let’s start the conversation.